Weekend Economists Stamp Out Ignorance December 27-29, 2013

[Demeter]

14. THE PRIVATE SECTOR HAS A BAD MONTH: The Invisible Hand Is All Thumbs By Charles P. Pierce

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Private_Sector_Has_A_Bad_Month



My goodness, it's been a terrible holiday season for those people who trumpet the flexibility and abiding genius of the Free Market over the clammy deadweight of Government. First of all, Target gets itself hacked to the point where just about everybody who's shopped there since the day after Thanksgiving knows that all of their personal information is in the wind. In fact, it's probably blowing in great gusts over the troubled steppes of the Ukraine.

Mr. Krebs lays out evidence that the man, Andrew Hodirevski, may be in touch with the criminals supplying Target's credit card data. There is no evidence that Mr. Hodirevski himself is behind the Target breach. Through some impressive Internet sleuthing, Mr. Krebs said he tracked Mr. Hodirevski to Rescator, the online alias for the person behind Rescator.la, an underground website that is currently selling Target's stolen credit card data. (Other sites, including Kaddafi.hk, Octavian.su and cheapdumps.org, are also selling this information.)

Given what has happened to Target, and following the rhetorical precedents set by opponents of the Affordable Care Act, I don't believe we have any choice but to close every big box retailer in America, starting with Target, until every one of these systems is made error-free and impregnable, which of course the private sector can do because it does everything better than the public sector...until you discover that somebody in Kiev has bought $70,000 worth of herring and kutia on your MasterCard. Then it's the government's fault because freedom.

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Then, just as we're all waiting on our porches for the last of our Christmas packages to arrive, we recall that the people who have worked for two decades to chloroform the U. S. Postal Service always have assured us that the Private Sector, as personified by FedEx and UPS, would more than make up the slack when the clearly obsolete USPS goes out of business.

Except, of course, no.

UPS and FedEx, under fire for failing to deliver Santa's packages in time for the holiday, blamed the delays on weeks of bad weather and higher demand from soaring online sales. UPS did not make pickups or deliveries on Christmas Day, but brought in extra workers on Christmas night to the company's hub in Louisville, Ky., to sort packages for Thursday and Friday deliveries, a spokesperson for the company told The Associated Press. Some FedEx customers were able to pick up packages at local FedEx Express centers on Christmas Day. Both companies, pummeled on social media by negative comments from furious, gift-less customers, issued apologies. "The volume of air packages in our system exceeded the capacity of our network... We apologize," UPS said in a statement. FedEx echoed that apology, calling the volume an "extraordinary event."

Again following the rhetorical precedents set in the debate over the Affordable Care Act, I think both FedEx and UPS should be shut down immediately because their systems were overwhelmed by a sudden demand. This was due to inexplicable "bad weather" in a season we like to call "winter" and due to an "extraordinary event." Called "Christmas." Which is so extraordinary that it has occurred on the very same day since at least 336 A.D.

I'm sure that, next year, FedEx and UPS will solve the mysteries that are winter and Christmas in time to demonstrate once again that the Private Sector does everything better than the public sector, or else will find a way that it is all the government's fault because freedom.

And snow.